November 22nd PAC meeting Agenda and September Minutes

Please join us tomorrow, Wednesday, November 22nd at 6pm in the library. Our PAC meetings are open to all parents of our school community. Free childminding will be provided. We hope to see you all there!

Norquay Elementary PAC

AGENDA

22 Nov 2017

6:00-7:00PM Norquay Library

Welcome & Introductions, Attendance: (2 mins – Charis)

Approve past minutes – Sept 2017 – See below (2 mins – Charis)

Approve Nov Agenda

Ice Breaker – (10mins) If on an island….

Teacher Representative (2 mins – Charis)

Mr. Wee’s Operation Care: Norquay’s WE Day club https://www.we.org/ is initiating its “Operation Care” campaign to raise awareness and educate about homelessness. “Operation Care will run from Nov 8th to Dec 8th. Operation Care” is a donation drive to collect canned/dried food and clothing (sweaters and jackets only) for help out our local citizens in need of basic assistance. WE hope that you will support us in this endeavour. We will be collecting canned/dried food and clothing (sweaters and jackets only) donations from November 8th until December 8th.

The WE Day Club would like to thank-you for raising awareness and educating about homelessness and being a part of this inspiring community/school initiative.

Mark Warkentin: 5-minute presentation on the library. VSB supported research site. Password protected. Password is “student.” Had library monitors meeting today. 100 students showed up. Grades 4 to 7. Dropped weekly limit to 4 books per week this year. Used to be 5.

Admin message: Principal report — Highlights (See Mr. Krug’s full report for details. Mandarin PE prep role had been posted. Originally it was posted for a Mandarin speaker, but it’s been changed to English. Mandarin will be made up elsewhere so it stays as a 50/50 balance. The class size breakdown keeps changing, but here is the latest: Grades 4-7: 30 students. 28 if it is a split class. Grade 3/4 split: 23 students if there are more 3s. 24 students if there are more 4s. Grades 1-3: 22 students. No reduction for split classes. Kindergarten: 20 students. Designated Student Reductions: 1 Designated student in class no reduction 2 Designated students in class 1 student reduction 3 Designated students in class 2 student reduction (3 is avoided if at all possible) Hopefully it will stay that way, but it might change again. Resource teachers have only been pulled for 2.5 days so far this year to cover classes), which is pretty good. Terry Fox Run will be Oct. 6 at 1:15 Aboriginal awareness — we have about 15 aboriginal students this year. Reconciliation Walk Saturday, Sept. 24 — I encourage you to go School Safety Patrol — limited to older grades. Big turnout this year. School Fees, etc. will be sent home next week. Delayed because office is short-staffed. In the process of hiring new office administrator since Megan resigned. It’s been a big load for Carmen.

Icebreaker game — Break into small groups. Find 10 things everyone in group has in common

Garden — (See Val’s report for details) We could use volunteers – small group on committee. Largest above ground garden in district

Playground — Letti. We are looking for someone to take over the playground. Buddy benches. $850 each. Considering 3 or 4 more. Natural landscaping/ outdoor playground. Looking for someone to take this on

Transportation — Edna away. Holman speaks. Cones in front of school on Slocan only work when they’re there. Need better strategy. Bilingual flyers? Use them like tickets. Put them on windshields. If we’re going to keep doing cones, we need 10 volunteers: one for every morning and afternoon.

PAC Chair (Charis) — Volunteers? Come see me afterwards if you want to join a committee. There are a few positions available. We need a co-chair. Need members-at-large. Need volunteer coordinator. We can do elections at next meeting. Very informal. You can nominate yourself.

DPAC (Shauna) — Trustee candidate forum coming up. If you have questions you want posed to trustees, come to me, go through the PAC Facebook page or go to vancouverdpac.org.

Budget (Shirley) — I was asked to do a draft budget, but it may be better to just say what we want. Once we have a wish list from the school, we’ll put some numbers to it. Question (Tim Krug): Do you want each teacher to come forward with what they want for their class? Do they have to speak to the PAC? For big items, they need to speak to PAC. But each classroom has $100 to spend. Teachers need to submit receipts. Individual requests for things like field trips come to PAC and we motion them through. Last year we raised about $10,000. The gaming account is at $24,000 right now. Question (Barb): Would there be an opportunity to have an intermediate and a primary playground? Answer (Tim): Yes. If it got built. We have 4 supervision aides. They rotate through. Lots of grants available to help raise money. This week, we’ve just had primaries on the playground. We’ll see how crowded it gets when everyone is on it. Sharon: I was hoping to get our gravel field divided up into zones sokids aren’t playing all over the place. Movable soccer nets, maybe? Ormore ultimate Frisbee space? Tim: The basketball courts are very well used. Maybe more hoops? Janisha: The hoops right now are limited to grades 4 and up.

Miscellaneous — Charis: Ling is our new fundraising coordinator. Talk to Ling if you have fundraising ideas.